The Study of the Middle East & North Africa

The establishment of the Laudian Professorship of Arabic in 1636 marked the beginning of the University of Oxford’s tradition of scholarship and teaching in Arabic. Today, Oxford is one of the leading centres in the English-speaking world for the study of the Middle East, with more than 50 academics in Arabic language and literature, medieval and modern Near East History, Islamic Philosophy, Islamic Art & Archaeology, and ancient Egypt and the Near East. Oxford’s research in the Middle East is based in two key hubs: the Faculty of Oriental Studies and the Middle East Centre.

Oriental Studies is home to a range of undergraduate courses and graduate programmes focused on the region and Islam. Undergraduate courses include Arabic language and culture and Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies. Students in Arabic spend a year studying in the Middle East; a popular option has been the French Institute in Damascus.

Oxford is also a leading centre for postgraduate study of the Arab World, with more than 75 students focused on the ancient and modern Middle East.  About half of these are studying for a doctorate, while the other half are enrolled in taught Master’s degree courses.

Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Oxford take place in the Faculty of Oriental Studies and through the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Yarnton. Oxford is an important centre of Hebrew and Jewish Studies and has been since the sixteenth century. Students come from all over the world for both undergraduate and graduate studies, and there are unrivalled collections of Hebrew and Yiddish manuscripts and printed books in the Bodleian Library.

Courses available to students range from the Hebrew Bible to modern Israel, from developments within Judaism in the time of Jesus to the history of Jews under Islam or in modern Europe, from the Dead Sea Scrolls to Modern Hebrew poetry.

The King Mohammed VI Fellowship in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies was established in 2004 as the fruit of an agreement between the Moroccan British Society (MBS) and St Antony’s College, Oxford University. As well as strengthening and promoting Moroccan-British ties, the new Fellowship aimed to promote study of Morocco in Britain through the endowment by the MBS of an academic position at Oxford.

Several new academic courses related to Morocco and the Mediterranean have now been introduced at Oxford: North African Politics, The History of the Maghreb Since 1830 and International Relations of the Maghreb, all of which are available as options on the MPhil in Modern Middle East studies.

The Middle East Centre of St Antony’s College, founded in 1957 and one of the first of its kind at a Western university, is a hub for the interdisciplinary study of the modern Middle East.  The Centre’s library and archive has exceptional resources, and houses over 400 document collections and well over 100,000 photographs.

The Centre recently received a £1 million benefaction from the King Abdul Aziz Foundation for Archives and Manuscripts in Riyadh, and is deeply involved with the Sheikh Zayed Book Award, a cultural award which is presented annually to outstanding Arab writers, intellectuals, publishers, and young talents whose writings and translations have enriched Arab cultural, literary and social life.

Oxford is fortunate to have received generous financial contributions from friends in the region to support the work of the University’s students. Thanks to the generous support of Sheikh Yousef Abdul Latif Jameel of Saudi Arabia, a scholarship programme has been established to support a fully funded graduate place based in the Faculty of Oriental Studies.

The Yousef Jameel Scholarship is available to one graduate student demonstrating exceptional academic merit and/or potential, commencing a course of study in the history of Islamic art. Oxford benefits from a range of research and resource centres that support and serve as a focal point for those focusing their research on the Middle East and Islamic culture.

The Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies is a Recognised Independent Centre of the University of Oxford, established in 1985 to encourage the scholarly study of Islam and the Islamic world. The Centre provides a meeting point for the Western and Islamic worlds of learning and contributes to the multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary study of the Islamic world. It has been host to a number of distinguished visiting lecturers from the Middle East including HE Shaikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr Al-Thani, Prime Minister of Qatar; HRH Prince Saud al-Faisal, Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; Mr Amr Moussa, Secretary-General of the League of Arab States; and Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, historian, Islamic scholar, and author of well over fifty books in various languages.

Additionally, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies Lecturerships have been established in the University Faculties of History, Theology, Anthropology, Politics and International Relations, and Economics. A key indicator of our growing commitment and engagement in the region is the remarkable number of new academic posts that the University has been able to create in recent years relevant to the region, including Islamic Studies, Islamic Art and Architecture, Islamic archaeology, Islamic numismatics (the study of currency), and the Study of the Contemporary Arab World.

Khalili Research Centre
The Khalili Research Centre for the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East provides facilities for research in the field of Middle Eastern art and architecture.

Griffith Institute
The Griffith Institute specializes in Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern studies. It is located within the Sackler Library complex, which holds some 30,000 volumes on these subjects. Its archive is the world’s largest collection of Egyptological papers, including the excavator’s records from the tomb of Tutankhamun and hundreds of 19th-century studio photographs of Egypt and the Levant.

Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library's Islamic manuscript collection is one of the most important in Europe. It also holds extensive materials in the languages of the Middle East. It has an important collection of Arabic, Persian and Turkish manuscripts, with particular strengths in fields such as Arabic science, mathematics and medicine and Persian illuminated and illustrated manuscripts. The Bodleian law library holds numerous texts and resources on Islamic Law and North African and Middle Eastern law.

The Bodleian holds one of the most important collections of Hebrew manuscripts in the world thanks to accession of several key collections in the 19th century, such as the Oppenheimer Library and fragments from the Cairo Genizah. It also holds important collections of unique early Yiddish printed books.

Ashmolean
The Ashmolean Museum has renowned holdings of art and archaeology from the Middle East and has a dedicated Islamic Middle East Gallery which displays artefacts made over a period of more than 1000 years. These include beautiful examples of Islamic script and calligraphy, arabesque decorations and textiles of the Islamic world.